Pulse Rate July 2013

Before being fixed in the ’80s, one of the Statue of Liberty’s iconic rays would poke a hole in the upraised arm when the wind would blow.

Humans are bioluminescent (emit light). Ultrasensitive cameras pointed at a subject recently detected “glittering” illumination a thousand times weaker than a human eye can discern, the byproduct of cell metabolism.

God Bless America: Under the Freedom of Information Act you can acquire a copy of your FBI file, although sensitive information may be redacted.

Before it was shuttered during the Great Depression, Thomas Edison’s cement company helped construct the original Yankee Stadium in 1922.

In addition to a mountain of gold, Fort Knox also contains several tons of opium and morphine—a Cold War-era emergency painkiller cache.

Yes, someone actually did a lengthy experiment and found out that blowing into original Nintendo cartridges to get them to work is a bad idea. The moisture in your breath eventually corrodes the copper contacts, rendering the game useless.

The most complex commonly used Chinese character is ? or nàng. Its 36 strokes refer to the sound a voice makes through a stuffy nose.

While cockroaches will outlive humans during nuclear fallout, the most radiation-resistant organism is the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans. When frozen, it can sustain almost five thousand times the amount of radiation a human can.

Products to covet from the fictional Acme Corporation, made famous by Looney Tunes cartoons: Anti-Nightmare Machine, Building Disintegrator, Dehydrated Boulders, Earthquake Pills, Jet Propelled Unicycle and the Ultimatum Dispatcher.

The steam-powered catapults that launch fighter jets off of aircraft carriers could throw a pickup truck almost a mile.

More fodder for JFK assassination conspiracy theorists: Lee Harvey Oswald got near-failing marksmanship grades in the Marines and was court martialed for accidentally shooting himself in the elbow.

Don’t hate the late furniture designer Robert Propst for the much-maligned office cubicle. His 1968 invention was originally called the Action Office System and was intended to give employees enough room to increase productivity, privacy and health.